To stop seeking validation, start by noticing the moment something you've done feels unfinished until someone else responds to it. For many people that hunger began young, when approval was how they learned whether they were all right. It made sense then. The person feeling it now is older than the hunger, and was never made of other people's verdicts.
Leocadia sold her car on Saturday, and by Monday lunchtime she has told five people.
She'd thought about it for months. The car spent most weeks in the basement of her building, the insurance was due, and the bus stop is two minutes from her door. On Saturday morning she handed over the keys and walked home feeling light.
On Monday she mentions it at the coffee machine, then to the woman at the next desk, then in a team call that was meant to be about something else. Each time she watches the face in front of her for the same two words: good idea.
Most people say something like it. One colleague says, "Rather you than me, in this heat," and laughs, and goes back to his screen.
Leocadia goes back to hers. She reads the same email three times without taking it in. She can't work out whether "rather you than me" meant yes or no, and until she knows, Saturday's lightness seems to have gone somewhere she can't reach.
The car is sold either way. Nothing about the decision has changed since the weekend, only whether anyone else has approved of it.
How do you stop seeking validation?
You start by catching the gap: the stretch between doing something and feeling it's done, while you wait for someone else to respond. Leocadia's decision was made on Saturday. By Monday it still didn't feel made, because one colleague's word wouldn't settle. Noticing that gap, gently and often, matters more than forcing yourself not to care what anyone thinks.
First, what this doesn't mean. It never means asking less of the people who look after you. A question to your doctor, a check-in with a therapist, a call to someone you trust when things are hard: none of that is validation-seeking, and nothing on this page asks you to cut back on it. Treatment, medication and support carry on exactly as they are.
And some needs for reassurance belong with a professional. If yours is constant, if it comes with checking you can't stop, anxiety that won't settle, low mood that has lasted for weeks, or any thought of harming yourself, please see a doctor or a mental health professional soon. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. If someone in your life uses their approval to frighten or control you, that's their behaviour, not your pattern: a domestic abuse service or the police where you live can help, and if there's danger right now, call your local emergency services.
For everyone else, there's a free step this piece points to: a conversation of twenty to forty minutes with an RS Method Master Practitioner, who starts by asking about you. No pressure. Free Mentoring Session. Or read on.
Where does the hunger for approval come from?
Often from a time when approval was the only reading available.
A young person can't yet check their own work. Whether a drawing is good, whether a question was silly, whether they're welcome at the table: the answers mostly arrive on other people's faces. A smile meant yes. A frown meant think again. Silence could mean anything, which is why silence can be hard to bear.
For a child, that's not weakness. It's how a person with no other measure finds their footing. In some places the approval was warm and easy to come by. In others it was scarce, or it moved about without warning, and a young person learned to keep watching for it the way you'd keep checking the sky before a long walk.
The trouble is that the watching doesn't retire on its own. It keeps the same post for years. The adult can write a report, plan a trip or make a hard decision, and still feel that it isn't finished, that it doesn't quite count, until someone else has looked at it and nodded.
That's the hunger the title is about. It isn't the adult's. It belongs to a much younger person, still doing the job they were given.
You are not broken. You are buried. The watching was laid over you a little at a time, and you were already there underneath it.
What does validation-seeking look like day to day?
Mostly small, and easy to miss.
- The second send. You make a decision, then message it to someone "just to check", though you'd already decided.
- The refresh. A post, an email or a piece of work goes out, and you look back at it far more often than it needs.
- The pre-emptive verdict. You talk your own work down in advance: "It's nothing special, I threw it together."
- The borrowed opinion. Someone asks what you think, and you answer with what you guess they think.
- The unfinished good news. Something goes well, and it doesn't feel real until it's been told.
None of these is a flaw of character. Each is the old watching, doing its rounds.
Some of the same ground is covered from another side in self-worth vs self-esteem, which looks at the score people keep on themselves. And if the hunger shows up most as dread before an ask, fear of rejection stays with that flinch.
Isn't it normal to want people to like what you do?
Yes. A kind word lands well on anyone, and it should. Asking a colleague to read your draft, or someone you trust what they make of a decision, is often wise.
The difference isn't in whether you enjoy approval. It's in what happens without it. Where a kind word is a pleasure, its absence is a shrug. Where it has become the thing that finishes the moment, its absence leaves the moment hanging open, and you go looking for someone to close it.
That's why the answer isn't to stop caring, or to train yourself not to want anything from anyone. It's to see which of your moments are waiting for a verdict, and to notice that you were whole before any of them arrived.
Can you let one sent message wait?
This is a small noticing exercise. It isn't therapy or medical care, and if you have a doctor or therapist, they stay in charge of your care. Nothing here asks you to step back from treatment, medication or support, and anyone in a recovery programme keeps it, and its people, just as they are. If your pattern involves alcohol, drugs, harming yourself or someone who hurts you, this exercise isn't for that: a doctor, a helpline or someone you trust is the place to go. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
It only ever uses an ordinary message. A message asking for help, or anything about your health or safety, you send and follow up as soon and as often as you need.
- Choose a message you were going to send anyway. One where part of you hopes for a particular reply: a plan you've made, a photo, a bit of news.
- Send it, then turn to one small job that needs your hands. Washing a cup, wiping a shelf, retying a shoe.
- While you do it, notice the pull to check. Where you feel it, and what it's hoping to hear. Nothing needs to change.
- When the job's done, look at the reply or don't. Either is fine.
- If a reply has come, notice which part of it you read first.
If the waiting stirs up something heavier than you expected, stop there and talk it over with someone you trust or your doctor.
A reply can still be welcome. The exercise only shows you how long you were waiting for it.
Why talk to an RS Method Master Practitioner before deciding anything?
The call is free, on Google Meet, and runs twenty to forty minutes. Three things make it a sensible next step.
- You're weighing up the work, not looking for advice. The call is about whether the five days, or some other step, suits you. They give no advice or treatment on the call.
- A conversation appeals more than a page. There's a person on the other end, at a time you pick yourself.
- Any ending is acceptable to you. A call can finish with a next step here, a pointer somewhere else, or simply a clearer head.
A call isn't the place for an emergency. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services, and nothing about this work is therapy or medical care: any treatment you have carries on alongside it.
The open times are on the booking page.
Kind words make good company and poor judges.
Huda, in a Google review of the five days: "I came to the 5-Day RS Method Experience not really knowing what to expect. Five days later, I walked away feeling that something inside me had shifted."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. If something went well for you today and it still feels unfinished, that's worth noticing, and worth talking about. The calendar is on the booking page: Free Mentoring Session